Spanish Civil War
Overview
In Spain, the “Women, repression and civil war” roundtable was presented by Agnes Rosell from NOVACT with Anna Miñarro, Sònia Olivella, and Gemma Pasqual at La Fede (the Catalan NGO federation) on September 13th 2024. Clinical psychologist Anna Miñarro, who is the Co-Director of the first research project in the Spanish State on psychic trauma and intergenerational transmission and also co-director and member of different projects of historical memory and research of those who were oppressed under the Francoist dictatorship, started her speech by vindicating the role of women in the Spanish Civil War, stating that “politically committed women became the target of the tactic that aimed to produce the internalization of fear”.
The repression during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was mainly directed towards the working and peasant classes, as well as that middle-class republicanism that did not support the uprising and the very militants who remained loyal to the Republic. Miñarro cites the repression by General Mola, known as “The Director,” of the 1936 coup d’état. Our speaker highlights the famous quote from Emilio Mola (1887–1937): “We must sow terror… we must give the feeling of dominance by ruthlessly and without hesitation eliminating all those who do not think like us,” spoken at a meeting with cities that supported the war. In the context of war and during the Franco dictatorship, Miñarro shows, in terms of mental health, how the institutionalised and systematic repression and abuse of state policies during the war and the Franco dictatorship led women to question their own identity and the basic notion of knowing where and who they were.. Miñarro participated in the first report to the UN in front of the Human Rights Committee. It claims that the state does not accept this violence. One of the final conclusions it presents is that “the opposite of oblivion is truth; what in ordinary language is called oblivion is nothing but the repression of memories in the consequent tendency to return repressed again, whether through symptoms, dreams, or lasus.”.
Sònia Olivella, a criminal lawyer specializing in international criminal law, talks about the forced repression of Florencia Olazagoita Ceciaga and her granddaughter, who seeks truth and justice despite the many obstacles encountered by Spanish justice and who is awaiting the case at the United Nations. She talks about that extreme violence as an established plan of the military rebels against the civilian population. The case focuses on Gipuzkoa, where there were 979 victims of extrajudicial or judicial executions with no guarantees from civil society, not to mention the deaths at the front of these 778 who are still missing. These data are taken from the quarrel and historical expert reports. Florencia Olazagoita Ceciaga disappeared in Guipuzcoa in 1936, when Franco’s troops entered. She was intercepted by a group of military rebels and was arrested by the “requetés” while she was working on her grocery shop. She was 38 years old and pregnant, and they kidnapped her 10-year-old son, Eduardo. She was taken to a detention center by the civil guard, and then she was taken to prison. A death certificate was collected, but her body was never found, nor did they know what happened to her. Edward became part of the “Requetès” for four years.
Gemma Pasqual studied torture in Chile and brought her studies to Catalonia, speaking of torture from 1941 to 2019 with a sample of 22 women tortured at the police station of the Via Laietana in Barcelona, from a gender perspective. She explains different cases of women, such as Soledad, a woman who went to Via Laietana for sixteen years and was tortured. Victoria Pujolar, who managed to escape from Franco’s prison when she was brought back to Spain from France, Manolita was an enterprising woman who gave birth in a hospital where there were different plants for different social classes.
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